We’ll admit it. We were really, really excited to attend the New England Americana Festival for the first time this year, and we knew we’d get to surround myself with some amazing people while listening to fantastic music. My expectations were blown to smithereens, though, as Church hosted one of the best three-day shindigs I’ve ever attended (with excellent confetti-shooting party favors, to boot.) Words and pictures await you!
Thursday, March 31
WORDS | Hilary Hughes PHOTOS | Mick Murray
Though running around the joint like a crazy person, I was able to catch a bit of everyone’s set on Thursday night from early on. Stand out performances below.
Sarah Borges: … has yet to disappoint me, ever, when it comes to bowling people over and charming their pants off. It was refreshing to see Borges solo vs. with band — though I will say I missed Lyle Brewer (Broken Singles guitar player and Sarah’s husband)’s exceptional guitar skills — and her voice and stage presence remain incomparable as always. Also, girl gets major points in my book for breezing through her set with a baby kicking around in her tummy throughout the whole damn thing!
Will Dailey and the Rivals: Boston’s quintessential curly-cued dreamboat did not disappoint. Will can always be depended on for delivering a performance that draws everyone away from the bar and up towards the front of the stage (which is impressive in this case, as whiskey was the beverage of choice throughout the duration of the festival and Americana fans tend to be a rowdy bunch.)
Highway Ghosts: This was my first time checking out Highway Ghosts, and they weren’t messing around with their solid, stand-alone writing and riffs. Capitalizing on all good things when it comes to strong vocal ability, fluid guitar work and comfortable confidence, they plowed through their bout on the stage with ease and got the whole room dancing to boot.
Comanchero: Another first for me, and the perfect closer for Thursday night. I may as well just throw it out there: if you’re in a band that throws a mix of roots, rock and exceptional male vocals into your mix, I can guarantee you that I’ll give you a listen, probably like it and be impressed when you keep a venue full just before close on a Thursday night. The details are a little hazy as I was helping Mikey break down the photobooth around this time, but I walked away from Night 1 of the New England Americana Festival with a mental reminder to catch up with Comanchero in the future.
Also in this album: They Will Hate Us, Johnny A and the Molasses Band, Jeff Conley, The Molenes, The Rationales, Patrick Coman and Sam Otis Hill
Friday, April 1
WORDS | Hilary Hughes PHOTOS | Emma Dessau
Sarah Blacker and Abbie Barrett: Both of these ladies are known for their pipes, their lyrical know-how and their tendency to hush a crowded bar with nothing more than a look and chord dropped on some steel strings. Together, they make for a dynamic duo, and it was a special Americana Fest-only treat to catch them onstage together. Girls, do this more often!
Mount Peru: Mount Peru is one of my absolute favorite Boston bands at the moment, so I was a little bummed when their set got cut short due to some scheduling conflicts. Still, their version of “Hospital” was stellar and they’re one of the few bands I know who can hop on top of a table and rock out in like, four feet of space.
Audrey Ryan: Not to blow up David’s spot or anything, but he’s a HUGE fan of Audrey’s and I, for the first time, was able to see why. (I had never seen her before Friday night, to clarify.) She’s fantastic. She’s captivating. She has a beautiful voice and she can rock a guitar and a kick drum simultaneously like nobody’s business. Audrey played a couple of times on the side stage and she’s someone I could easily listen to for hours, so her more mellow approach provided an unexpected contrast to the speedy revelry taking place around her.
Also in this album: Jeff Byrd & the Dirty Finch, Tom Hagerty Band, This Way, John Colvert & the Great Brighton Fire, The Highland Drifters
Saturday, April 2
WORDS | Peter Legasey PHOTOS | Steve Wollkind
The first thing I saw when I arrived at Church for Night 3 of the 2011 New England Americana Festival was a little blue penguin. It had a pair of handcuffs around its jugular binding it to a cage inside a sketchy-looking van in the parking lot. I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps I had taken a bit too much Dayquil prior to leaving for the show. But if a few visions of an S&M remake of Happy Feet is the price I pay for being able to hear the music above my own flu symptoms, I guess I can live with that.
The Resurrectionists: Sparkly vests, cowboy hats and… well, more sparkly vests were the prevailing fashion trends of the evening. No surprise there, but I was expecting to see a few more garments made from bastardized American Flags. The only one I spotted at first wander was the guitar strap worn by Alex Kissel of the local roots band on stage when I arrived. The ‘Urrectionists (okay, bad abbreviation) had a neat little dynamic going between their two singers. Kissel’s voice was as clean-cut and disciplined as his appearance, while Ben Crouch had some scruff to his chops, both vocal and facial. The fellas got the boots in the crowd kickin’ during their last tune, the fast-paced “Jesus Loves You (But He Don’t Love That Noise You Make),” during which Crouch briefly left the stage to swing elbows with some cowgirls in the audience.
The Whiskey Boys: Playing the last of three mini-sets on the mini-stage atop the Church pool table, Fiddler/crooner David Delaney invited the audience to choose, via applause, whether the Whiskey Boys should sing a version of their song wherein his character lives in the end, or one in which he dies a (presumably horrible) death. The audience chose death. The Boys obliged, and followed with a tune that fulfilled Delaney’s promise that this would be their “emo set” – the chorus went something like “loose lips sink ships, loose lips sink relationships.” Someone pass the guyliner!
Glenn Yoder and His Merry Band: Looking All-American as fuck with a faded “Ohio” t-shirt and an acoustic guitar, former Cassavette Glenn Yoder played at least two songs that felt like horse trail versions of Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby.” The Kentucky trio was joined by Cambridge’s Laurence Scudder, who dosed the living Tommy Hilfiger advertisement with some psychedelic space-wah fiddle solos.
Mr. Sister: Ordinarily a four-piece folk pop outfit, Mr. Sister performed three sets as a duo on the side stage. Standing motionless in a plantain-colored dress, Amelia Emmet opened each set with a solemn, old-timey hymn played with no instrument save for her lilting, beautifully eerie voice. Watching the packed house fall silent and turn, layer by layer, in her direction when she began was one of the more surreal moments of the evening.
Cactus Attack: On a night that featured plenty of scholarly, professional-sounding tributes to the folk masters of old, Cactus Attack poured on the moonshine and spent their half-hour howling like wounded coyotes (…coyotes do howl, right?). Even their cantering waltz about trying to ease the nerves of their worried moms was noisy and belligerent.
Chasing Blue: In addition to busting out some of the filthiest solos of the night, this bluegrass quintet was the first act I saw that dared to rock the main stage without a drummer. Instead, the rhythm was provided by Alex Muri, who apparently rocked so hard that he blew out his amplifier. Without hesitation, he propped a drum mic in front of his stand-up bass for the duration of their set (how’s that for American ingenuity?). Banjoist/co-songwriter Maggie MacKay seemed as impressed with the chops of her mates as I was, her face lighting up with each acrobatic solo like a toddler at a magic show. Chatting briefly with MacKay after the concert, I learned that the Nova Scotia native is currently fighting for her right to stay in the U.S. So, if you’ve ever wanted to marry (legitimately, of course!) an attractive blonde who plays a mean banjo, you might want to find something nice to wear and check your local listings for the next Chasing Blue concert.
Coyote Kolb: The swirling, infinity-bar blues jam that concluded ‘Kolb’s set was probably the closest I’ll get to seeing a live performance of “Whipping Post” until I’m wealthy enough to afford a ticket to an actual Allman brothers concert. Festival organizer Noel Coakley earned that sheriff’s star he wore with some gun slinging on both the banjo and pedal steel guitar. Looking like a band of tattooed outlaws from the wild west, they opened with some smoldering tribal numbers that had me looking around for Jim Morrison’s Indian car crash (I didn’t see it. Guess I should have taken more Dayquil).
Eric Royer and his Guitar Machine: What could possibly be more “Americana” than an old-timey one-man band? In addition to the banjo in his arms, the dobro on his lap and the harmonica round his neck, Eric Royer used his feet to operate a contraption that looked like a pair of conjoined guitars that escaped from a Nine Inch Nails video. A few people were poking around at the apparatus when he left it unattended while playing on the main stage with another band, and I kept waiting for one of them to lose a finger in the steampunk mélange of pipes and springs.
Sam Reid and The Riot Act: By 11 pm, most of the audience was dancing, making out, firing off those confetti-spewing derringers or doing all three at once. Not me, of course. By now, the Dayquil had worn off, leaving this cowboy with some achy-breaky muscle-tissue and a bootload of mucus. Meanwhile, Sam Reid and co. were coming the closest of any band that night to playing the kind of country you hear at the ACM Awards. This was likely a relief to the older gentleman with the star-spangled dress shirt and serious handlebar mustache who I assume spent most of the evening wondering when Toby Keith was gonna show up.
Gearan, Royer, Ryan and McNeill: One change you might see at next year’s Americana-fest is a slightly earlier drawing for the nightly raffle. I saw tons of folks buy tickets throughout the night, but many of them had passed out, gone home or accidentally swallowed their ticket by now, judging from the mathematical abomination of numbers that had to be read before we finally had a winner. In the end, I think they might even have rigged it just so GRRM could start their set before closing time. I spent most of their hour-long performance waiting to ask someone in the band what effect Tim Gearan was using to make his telecaster sound so much like a fiddle. Singer Christian McNeill informed me that neither Gearan, nor anyone else in the group, was using any effect pedal of any kind. I should really go home and lie down.
Three Day Threshold: It was sort of ironic that Gogol Bordello was playing up the street at the House of Blues at that exact moment, because while Three-Day Threshold was dashing through their gypsified punkabilly staple, “My Favorite Titty Bar,” all I could think was: “Wow! This is exactly what Gogol Bordello shows used to be like before they started playing venues that were way too big to cultivate the kind of wedding-party atmosphere that made them fun in the first place!”
Throughout their 151-proof nightcap, 3DT’s lineup swelled and morphed like an amoeba as various members of the other bands (and the audience) joined them on stage. The set ended with a triple shot of iconic covers, during which washboardist Emily Holman handed out percussion instruments of various sorts (cowbells, tambourines, a glass Coke bottle that I initially thought was a… well, never mind). Frontman Kier Byrnes was equally generous, passing the mic to whomever was quick enough to grab it first.
The climactic sing-a-long was not without its casualties. The final tally: one broken tambourine, at least two shattered pint glasses, and god knows how many people who went home contaminated by some thoughtless plague monkey who can’t keep his germy ass out of the pit when a band starts playing “Honkey Tonk Woman.”
© 1999-2012 Dig Publishing LLC. All Rights Reserved. 
